Best Performance Max Agency for Ecommerce: 7 Real Options (2026)

Performance Max is where most ecommerce ad budgets go now - and where most of the waste hides. The campaign type rewards clean product data and tight structure, and punishes set-and-forget. Which makes every agency pitch sound the same and prove nothing: certified partner, data-driven, proven results.

So this guide does two things the pitches will not. First, it gives you seven checks you can run on any agency in about five minutes each, before a single sales call. Second, it names six real agencies, including us, and says plainly who each one fits and who should skip it. Every fact about a competitor below comes from their own site, with the date we checked it.

The Seven Checks: Run Them Before Any Sales Call

Performance Max is different from old-school Search. In Search, the agency writes the ads and picks the keywords. In PMax there are no keywords and barely any placements - Google assembles the ads from your product feed and your assets, then spends across Shopping, Search, Display, and YouTube as it sees fit. So the agency's real job sits upstream of the campaign settings, and every check below points at the same place: show me the inputs you control.

Each check takes about five minutes.

1. Feed receipts. Ask: "What changes in my feed in week one?" A real answer names specifics: title structure, product type depth, custom labels for margin. PMax bids on your product data, so feed quality decides the auction before any budget setting does. The weak answer is "we optimize your campaigns holistically" - that means they have never opened a feed. The PMax best-practices guide shows what real feed and structure work looks like.

2. A branded-query answer. Ask: "How do you keep PMax off my branded searches?" Left alone, PMax swallows your brand demand and calls it performance. The honest answer covers brand exclusions, a branded Search campaign as a backstop, and how they read the branded vs non-branded split. If they claim PMax reporting is fine as-is, they are grading their own homework.

3. Custom labels by margin. Ask: "How do you use custom labels to bid by margin?" Smart Bidding cannot read margin from your catalog. Without custom labels, your 60%-margin hero and your 20%-margin accessory get the same treatment inside one campaign. A strong agency tiers SKUs by margin and velocity and gives each tier its own campaign and target. A blank look is a fail.

4. A spend-split answer. Ask: "Where does my PMax spend actually go?" One campaign, four surfaces, one blended number - that is how waste hides. A good operator can explain how they read where the money lands and which products carry the account. An agency that only ever shows you the blended figure is showing you the weather. The wasted-spend fix walks through where the leaks live.

5. Pricing you can read before the call. Search the agency's site for a number. If there is no number anywhere, you learn the price on their terms, mid-pitch, after the anchoring. Of the six agencies below, only two publish one. That alone tells you something.

6. Public reviews under the real company name. Search Trustpilot and Clutch for the agency's name. Count the reviews you can actually read. Named, public, third-party reviews are the one proof an agency cannot write for itself.

7. Exit terms. Ask for the cancellation clause before the proposal. Month to month means the agency has to re-earn the fee every month. A 6-month lock-in means they collected the pressure up front.

Now the list.

Tinuiti: The Enterprise Full-Funnel Pick

Tinuiti is, by its own site, the largest independent full-funnel marketing agency in the US: 1,000+ employee owners, $4 billion in digital media under management, and 15+ service lines from linear TV to Amazon to paid search. Their case studies carry names like DSW, e.l.f., Sony, and Carter's. Performance Max is one lane of a much bigger machine. Checked 17 July 2026.

Who should pick them: a national or enterprise brand buying TV, retail media, Amazon, and search from one partner, where PMax is a slice of a coordinated plan. Scale like theirs buys platform relationships no boutique will ever have. If that is your size, call them and go with our blessing.

What the seven checks find: no pricing, minimums, or contract terms are published anywhere on tinuiti.com - those come on a sales call. Their contact form's annual spend dropdown starts at Under $1 Million, which frames who the shop is built for. Ask the feed-receipts and spend-split questions directly, because on an account their size those answers depend on which team you get. Full comparison.

ZenoX Media: The Feed-First PMax Specialist

This is us, so apply the same skepticism you would to anyone else on this list. The checkable facts: 200+ ecom brands on Google Ads across the US, Europe, and Dubai, over €200M in client revenue generated, and a team of 19 named people on the about page. Reviews: 4.8 from 38 reviews on Trustpilot, under our real name.

Who should pick us: a 6-7 figure/month ecom store where PMax and Google Shopping drive most of the revenue. That is the whole company - one channel, one store type. The Performance Max management service is feed-first by design: title rewrites against your real search terms, custom labels tiering SKUs by margin, one campaign per margin tier instead of one PMax for everything, and brand exclusions plus a Search backstop from day one. Our own AI engine reads every account hourly and ranks every product overnight, so the spend-split question has a live answer, not a monthly screenshot.

The checks, on us: pricing is published on the pricing page - a tiered percentage of monthly Google Ads spend, 10% on the first €10k stepping down to 6% above €150k, each rate applying only inside its own bracket. No setup fee. Month to month. Feed engineering included, not sold as an add-on.

Who should skip us: enterprise brands that want TV and Amazon in the same room (Tinuiti or Brainlabs), stores that want CRO bundled with the ads (KlientBoost), and anyone under roughly €5k/month in spend - more on that below.

Brainlabs: The Enterprise Testing Machine

Brainlabs calls itself the most agentic media agency, and the substance behind the phrase is real: 1,000+ Brainlabbers across five continents, a repository of 2,500 logged experiments, and an enterprise roster with names like Netflix, Hilton, Microsoft, and Estee Lauder. Founded in London in 2012, and a 2026 Google Ads Impact Award winner. Checked 17 July 2026.

Who should pick them: an enterprise that wants media buying and data science from the same team, and has the traffic volume to feed a real experimentation program. A testing culture with 2,500 logged experiments is a genuine asset on a campaign type as opaque as PMax - if your account is big enough to run those tests.

What the seven checks find: no pricing anywhere - their pricing page does not resolve, and their agency profiles list fees as confidential. No contract terms published either. The testing method is their headline strength, so ask the feed-receipts question specifically: method at media scale and feed work at SKU level are different crafts. Full comparison.

KlientBoost: Paid Ads Plus CRO in One Shop

KlientBoost is a well-reviewed generalist across SaaS, ecommerce, and lead gen - 4.9 from 400+ reviews on Clutch at our check date, one of the strongest public review bases in this list. Their own ecommerce page warns about "The PMax Trap" - their name for over-relying on Google's automation. Checked 17 July 2026.

Who should pick them: a store that wants paid ads and conversion rate optimization handled by one team. Landing pages and ads pulling in the same direction is a real advantage, and their review base is elite.

What the seven checks find: their pricing page publishes no numbers - it routes to a lead form. And take their own warning seriously as a filter: the answer to "The PMax Trap" is feed and structure work, so ask them the feed-receipts and custom-labels questions and listen for specifics. A caution about automation is only worth something when the inputs get worked. Full comparison.

Vysta: Measurement-First for 8 and 9-Figure Brands

Vysta (Vysta Paid Media Group) is a genuine Google and YouTube ecom specialist - the closest positioning to ours in this list. Checked 17 July 2026: they state a client floor of 7-9 figure revenue and $3K+/month spend, exclude dropshipping outright, and their homepage says most clients invest £1,500-£4,000 a month in management. Their materials name serious measurement practices: geo holdouts, conversion lift studies. Worth noting for a PMax shortlist: every AI mention on their site describes Google's own AI - Smart Bidding and PMax itself - which is an honest description of where the automation actually lives.

Who should pick them: an 8 or 9-figure brand that wants measurement rigor most agencies never attempt. Incrementality testing is the sharpest possible answer to the branded-query problem - a lift study tells you what PMax actually added, not what it claimed.

What the seven checks find: at our check date their Clutch profile showed zero reviews and we could not find a Trustpilot profile, and the testimonials on their site name people but not companies. No contract or cancellation terms are published. The measurement vocabulary is real - ask the feed-receipts question, since their public materials lead with measurement rather than feed work. Full comparison.

groas: The Flat-Fee AI Option under $25k Spend

groas sells a hybrid: autonomous machine-learning agents running Google Ads, plus one dedicated account manager per account. The refreshing part, checked 22 July 2026: pricing is on the site - $1,499/month flat for up to $25,000/month in ad spend, no setup fees, no lock-ins. They claim $100M+ managed on Google per year for 500+ businesses and agencies, and their own posts say plainly what they do not do: no Meta, no TikTok, and agencies keep the edge on creative and multi-channel work.

Who should pick them: a store spending under $25k/month. At that level a flat $1,499 beats almost any percentage fee, and the AI-first bet is cheap to test. Their transparency - published price, admitted limits - deserves real credit.

What the seven checks find: at check time we found one review on G2 and no Trustpilot or Capterra profile, so the public-review check comes up thin. And run the custom-labels and branded-query questions hard: an autonomous system is only as good as its answer to "how do you keep PMax off my brand." Full comparison.

The Comparison: All Seven Agencies in One Table

One row per agency, three checks from the rubric. Every cell comes from the agency's own site, with check dates in the sections above. "None published" means we looked and found nothing - it does not mean the agency has no answer, it means you get the answer on their call, on their terms.

	Built for	Pricing on their site	Contract terms they publish
Tinuiti	Enterprise, full-funnel, TV to Amazon	None published	None published
ZenoX Media	6-7 figure/month ecom on PMax + Shopping	10% of spend tiering to 6%	Month to month
Brainlabs	Enterprise media + data science	None published	None published
KlientBoost	Stores wanting paid ads + CRO in one shop	None published	None published
Vysta	8-9 figure brands, heavy measurement	£1,500-£4,000/month stated range	None published
groas	Stores under $25k/month spend	$1,499/mo published Jul 2026; none today	No lock-ins, per their site

When ZenoX Is the Wrong Call

An honest roundup includes the cases where the author loses. Here are ours.

Your spend is under roughly €5k/month. The fee math does not work - the management cost crowds out the media budget it is supposed to improve. At that stage, run PMax yourself: the best-practices guide covers the structure, the wasted-spend fix covers the leaks, and the free Google Ads eCom Lab community answers questions while you build. Every check in this guide doubles as a to-do list for doing it solo. If a fee still tempts you at that size, groas' flat $1,499 is the cheaper experiment.

You want every channel in one room. We run Google Ads. Not Meta, not TikTok, not Amazon, not email. If you want one agency coordinating all of it under a single strategy, that is Tinuiti or Brainlabs at enterprise scale - not us.

You need big named public case studies. Our proof is Trustpilot reviews, published pricing, and your own account read live on the first call. If your board wants a deck with household-name case studies on it, Tinuiti's roster carries far bigger names than ours. That is a real difference, and pretending otherwise would fail our own filter.

What the First 30 Days of PMax Management Should Look Like

Feed first, structure second, exclusions third, bids last. The order of operations in the first month tells you almost everything about who you hired.

Week 1: teardown. Search-term and product-level reports pulled, feed audited against them, Merchant Center disapprovals listed and prioritized. The first batch of title rewrites ships.

Weeks 2-3: structure. Custom labels deployed so SKUs are tiered by margin and velocity. Campaigns rebuilt around those tiers: champions, sleepers, and tail products get different budgets and different targets instead of sharing one blended campaign. Brand exclusions go live, with a branded Search campaign as the backstop.

Week 4: calibration. Feed changes have propagated, and Smart Bidding is recalibrating to the new match patterns. Only now do target adjustments make sense, because only now is the campaign bidding on data worth bidding on.

An agency that proposes bid changes in week one has the order backwards. Bids optimize the auction you are in; the feed decides which auctions you enter. If you are still weighing whether to hire anyone at all, should you hire an agency for Performance Max or rely on Smart Bidding runs that decision straight.

Run the Checks, Then Decide

Shortlist two or three names from the list above. Run all seven checks on each: feed receipts, the branded-query answer, custom labels, the spend-split answer, readable pricing, public reviews, exit terms. Get every fee table in writing - what a Performance Max agency costs breaks down the pricing models - and ask what feed work is included.

Whoever answers concretely, hire them. The strong answers are specific, dated, and boring. The weak answers are adjectives.

If we made your shortlist, start with our Performance Max management page - it lays out the exact structure we would run on your account, so you can check it against the seven questions before you talk to anyone. Then the first call is your account pulled up live, feed and branded split first, and a plain verdict on whether we can grow it. We would rather fail your checks honestly than pass them vaguely.

FAQ: Picking a Performance Max Agency

Who Is the Best Performance Max Agency for Ecommerce?

For a 6-7 figure/month ecom store where PMax and Shopping drive most revenue, our pick is ZenoX Media - 200+ ecom brands on Google Ads, 4.8 from 38 reviews on Trustpilot, and published pricing from 10% of spend down to 6%. We run ZenoX, so weigh that. The honest alternatives: Tinuiti for enterprise brands buying many channels at once, KlientBoost if you want paid ads plus CRO in one shop, Vysta for 8-9 figure brands that want heavy measurement work, and groas if you spend under $25k/month and want a flat $1,499 fee.

What Does a Performance Max Agency Actually Manage?

The feed first. Performance Max bids on the product data you give it, so a real PMax agency spends its first weeks on titles, product types, custom labels, and Merchant Center compliance - then structures campaigns by margin tier and adds brand exclusions. An agency that starts with bid changes is managing the dashboard, not the campaign.

How Much Does a Performance Max Agency Cost?

Most agencies in this list quote on a sales call. The published numbers that exist: Vysta's homepage states most clients invest £1,500-£4,000 a month, and ZenoX charges a tiered percentage of monthly Google Ads spend starting at 10% on the first €10k and stepping down to 6% above €150k, each rate applying only inside its own bracket. Whatever agency you pick, get the fee table in writing and check what feed work is included.

How Do I Know If an Agency Is Good at Performance Max?

Two questions filter almost everyone. One: ask what they change in your feed in week one - a real answer names title structure, product types, and custom labels. Two: ask how they keep PMax off your branded queries - the honest answer covers brand exclusions, a branded Search campaign, and how they read the split. Vague answers to either mean they watch the dashboard and call it management.

Do I Need an Agency to Run Performance Max?

Not always. Under roughly €5k/month in ad spend, run it yourself - the free PMax guides on this site and the Google Ads eCom Lab community cover the structure. An agency starts paying for itself when the account is big enough that feed mistakes and wasted PMax spend cost more than the fee.

Can an Agency Stop Performance Max from Taking My Branded Traffic?

Yes, and it is one of the first things a good one does. Google supports brand exclusions on Performance Max, so branded searches can be walled off into their own Search campaign with its own budget and target. That keeps the PMax numbers honest: what looks like PMax growth is often your own brand demand being reassigned. Ask any agency you interview to explain this in plain words before you sign.

What Should a Performance Max Agency Report Every Month?

More than one blended number. PMax mixes Shopping, Search, Display, and YouTube into a single campaign, so a blended figure can hide a lot. Ask for the branded vs non-branded split, product-level performance so you can see which SKUs carry the account, and what actually changed in the feed and structure that month. An agency that reports one number and a screenshot is reporting the weather, not their work.